Book Chapter

Disaster risk reduction and furthering women's rights

Abstract

Traditional conceptions of disaster mitigation focus mainly on risk reduction practices using technology; however, disaster mitigation needs to be reconceptualized as a discursive and social intervention process in the disaster-development continuum to further women’s rights and equality and their emancipatory interests before, during, and after disasters. Such reconception would be more aligned with current formulations within the Sendai Framework of Action (2015–2030), which to an extent highlights the need to engage with gender inequalities through women’s leadership in disaster and development planning and the fifth UN Sustainable Development Goal on furthering gender equality. As discursive practices, disaster mitigation should question discrimination against and marginalization of women in disaster recoveries and development processes in different contexts. Discourse about women and gender is ingrained in the society and further perpetuated through regressive and patriarchal state policies and practices in the disaster-development continuum. A critical and progressive politics for women’s rights that furthers their equality would counter regressive discourses and their effects. Women experience discrimination through complex and multiple axes of power, such as race, class, ethnicity, and other social markers. Instead of treating women as a passive site for relief and recovery, nongovernmental organizations, both national and international, should work with women as persons with agency, voice, aspirations, and capacity to bring about policy and social change in the terrain of the disaster-development continuum. Critical humanitarianism and mobilizing women’s leadership would be a hallmark of such work. The relation between disaster mitigation and women’s rights is that of a virtuous cycle that calls for a synergy between disaster response and development goals to further women’s equality and rights. A vision for socially just and equal society must inform the relation between disaster mitigation and furthering women’s rights.

Authors

Akerkar, Supriya

Oxford Brookes departments

School of Architecture

Dates

Year of publication: 2022
Date of RADAR deposit: 2022-07-01

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All rights reserved. Originally published in Oxford Research Encyclopedia of Natural Hazard Science, 2022.

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Related resources

This RADAR resource is Part of Oxford Research Encyclopedia of Natural Hazard Science [ISBN: 9780199389407] / edited by Susan L. Cutter, Djillali Benouar(Oxford University Press, 2016-)
This RADAR resource is the Accepted Manuscript of Disaster risk reduction and furthering women’s rights